***
Jean Gee was there at the start with Ann Cryer. Now 77, the former social worker helped to introduce the MP to the victims’ mothers in 2002. “I used to work with kids who were excluded from school,” she tells me. “And I’d see first-hand how they were picked up by men in their taxis.” At the time, Jean didn’t know that one of the girls would be a close family member.
Amber* was raped just over a decade ago by a man she believed was a friend of her father’s. Unlike a number of the town’s victims, who have left, fearful that their attackers still walk its streets, Amber still lives in Keighley. Every day is a reminder of her trauma. She suffers from a severe eating disorder that has left her unable to have children. Her body is skeletal, her arms tattooed. “It marks a girl for life,” Jean says.
Around the same time as Amber was being groomed, a gang of 12 men were targeting a 13-year-old girl, Autumn*. The torment she would endure — over 13 months between 2011 and 2012 — would become Keighley’s darkest chapter. During one incident, she was gang-raped by five men; during another, she was raped in an underground car park next to a wall brazenly graffitied with the names of some of her attackers.
In 2016, Autumn’s 12 attackers were convicted — and the judge found she’d been failed by police and social workers. After one attack, officers dismissed her as a prostitute; after another, they failed to progress a medical assessment. As for her abusers, the judge concluded that “they saw her as a pathetic figure who… served no purpose than to be an object that they could sexually misuse and cast aside”. In their mugshots, two of her attackers are smiling.
Autumn’s younger brother, Adam*, now in his early 20s, believes the past fortnight’s debate over grooming gangs is fuelled by hypocrisy. “Politicians of all stripes colluded with the police to engage in a cover-up,” he tells me. He blames the Conservative Party for “failing to act on this issue despite so many cases occurring under them”. And he blames Labour, whose leader this week suggested it was a “far-Right” issue, despite the “most impacted areas being run by that party”. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage’s Reform — which registered 10% of the vote in Keighley in last year’s general election, well below its national average — is also trying to make political hay. “At least the SDP here have always prioritised the issue of grooming gangs,” he says. As for Elon Musk, who described Labour MP Jess Phillips as a “rape genocide apologist” and called for Tommy Robinson to be released from prison, Adam views him as “clearly unstable” but welcomes his intervention. “Anything that brings attention to this issue is good,” he says.
Back in town, though, most are oblivious to this week’s political mudslinging, which culminated on Wednesday in a failed Conservative vote to force a new inquiry. Few of those I speak to — Pakistani and white, young and old — are aware of Musk’s recent comments. “If Tommy Robinson came to Keighley, he’d get beaten up,” says one white woman in her early-20s. “When will [Pretoria-born] Musk start tweeting about South Africa’s race problems?” jokes one bemused madrasah teacher.
There’s a similar lack of consensus over calls for a new inquiry into West Yorkshire’s grooming gangs. This is partly because people doubt its sincerity; neither the Conservatives nor Reform mentioned an inquiry in last year’s manifestos. But it’s mostly because few believe another investigation will be acted upon. “What would the value be?” says Gee, who voted Conservative last year. “How likely is it that something will happen? It’s not as if we have the money to change anything. Just look at our housing and social care system.”
Even Adam has his reservations. “What comes after? We need to deal with the source and not just address the past.” Typical was one stallholder in Keighley’s indoor market. “I know I’d feel different if my daughter was one of the victims,” she said, “but I don’t think it’s a priority now.” Keighley, she points out, may be pretty — but it isn’t thriving. In some neighbourhoods, 40% of households are classified as deprived.
Still, there are attempts to learn from the past. After school, youth workers patrol the shopping centre and adjoining bus station where many of the town’s victims were once ensnared. “There are still creeps around,” says one teenage girl. “But they’re not just Pakistani. To be honest, they’re more likely to be a 60-year-old white guy.”
There are those, however, who remain concerned that former groomers have gone unpunished. After all, if Cryer and those seven mothers were correct, and there were at least 35 offenders in the town, not all have been caught. “Membership of these gangs is informal and often it’s hard to pin down members,” says Adam, who still believes the abusers walk the town’s streets. “You also can’t blame girls who haven’t come forward given the police’s previous failures.” Jean agrees, though also believes many “grooming gangs” have been replaced by county lines gangs, whose members are both Pakistani and white. Just this month, more than 50 members of one such gang in Keighley — peddling heroin and crack cocaine — were arrested by police.
But such developments don’t fit into the narrative of Britain’s national debate — a binary war, fought mostly online, between those uncomfortable with highlighting the ethnicity of West Yorkshire’s grooming gangs and those who seek to exploit it. Meanwhile, the affected communities are viewed as collateral. As one fed up local told me: “We’ve got enough wars going on without your Tommy Robinsons starting another.”
In Keighley, few are worried about the return of the far-Right. Their Conservative MP, Robbie Moore, has been outspoken about the need for another inquiry, neutralising movements further to the Right. In 2017, the EDL tried to hold a protest in the town and were outnumbered by police. But there’s still disquiet. In 2022, three members of a neo-Nazi cell in Keighley were jailed after being caught buying a 3D printer to make a gun. The following year, a teenager was jailed after he planned to attack one of the town’s mosques while disguised as an armed police officer.
Nor has faith in its institutions been restored. Last November, the town was left horrified when a local police officer was jailed for having sex with a vulnerable domestic abuse victim whose complaints he had been tasked with investigating. When I asked West Yorkshire Police how it hopes to regain Keighley’s trust after decades of neglect, I was told the officer’s “offending was not connected to grooming gangs” and redirected to an old press release.
But it feels connected, feeding into a pattern of betrayal. Despite the best efforts of a noble MP, Keighley remains a case study in exploitation — first by a terrified establishment who ignored the abuse of the town’s young girls, and then by a far-Right menace who sought to capitalise on their cowardice. And now, as attempts are made to reheat their trauma, Keighley’s residents might be forgiven for their ambivalence. They’ve seen this before, and know how it ends. The fires of our digital ecosystem will consume its subjects. But in Keighley, cold resignation preserves them.
*Names have been changed
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I am not quite sure what to think about this article. It seems to oscillate between almost, but not quite, getting to grips with the cowardice of the police, social services and elements of the political estasblishment which prevented serious attention being given to the plight of the girls being abused on the one hand; and seeking to demonise anyone to the right of the Conservative party who seeks, or has previously sought, to shine a light on what had been happening in Keighley as opportunist ne’er-do-wells seeking only to exploit others pain and horror for their own selfish ends.
Surely, Mr Furedi, there is a middle ground to be found? Are there not honest, ordinary folks who are horrified by what has happened, indeed still is apparently happening, up and down the country who want justice for the victims as well as for the institutional complicity which facilitated the abuse to be drawn kicking and screaming into the spotlight of national exposure?
Frankly I am becoming tired beyond measure of the very idea that it is a good thing to continually, and simplistically, polarise the debate by statements such as:
“But such developments don’t fit into the narrative of Britain’s national debate — a binary war, fought mostly online, between those uncomfortable with highlighting the ethnicity of West Yorkshire’s grooming gangs and those who seek to exploit it.”
For a start this statement does not represent the truth of what is going on: there are very many people who are not uncomfortable with highlighting the ethnicity of any grooming gang in any town or city and, at the same time, have no wish to exploit the fact of the perpetrators’s ethnicity.
The only reason that ethnicity is of any significance with regard to this horrendous issue, a significance Mr Furedi seems either not to realise or to wilfully ignore, is because many people believe that if the grooming gangs had been comprised of native, white British men they would have been investigated, infiltrated, arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned in very short order. Whereas, as seems to have been the case, the ethnicity of the gangs seems to have made the institutions which should have responded on behalf of the victims instead turn the other way for fear of being labelled racist or, perhaps, ‘far right’.
And that, Mr Furedi, is exactly why there should be a national public inquiry into what has been going on in so many towns and cities the length and breadth of the UK for so many years. Because without such an investigation we will never know whether or not it is the case that young girls – of whatever ethnicity, religion or background – have been sacrificed on the altar of multiculturalism to simply preserve the status quo and prevent the exposure of the nonsense of such vacuous statements as: ‘Diversity is our strength’.
Unfortunately I am allowed to give you only one upvote. Given the choice I would give you one hundred.
Hear! Hear!±
You may see my suggestion to listen to the journalist, Andrew Norfolk, who first uncovered the story c15yrs ago. He does concur some political correctness a factor and that cannot be denied. He also though outlines what was happening in Court when these girls had to give evidence and how they were being systematically broken down by the defendants Barristers. Cases were getting to Court but then collapsing.
After sitting through many of these cases in Northern Britain guess who Norfolk went to see who’d recently taken up his new Crown Prosecution job? And guess who then changed the rules on how the victims had to be treated in Court and put one of the best Northern Prosecutors onto the task of gaining convictions? And then guess what happened? Yep Gangs started to get convicted. But a big issue here overlooked is how young women were treated in Courts.
Worth reading what Norfolk then says about the genesis of the Jay Report, the 7 years of that investigations including the interviews of victims and those involved, and then the drift on implementation of recommendations. (It is to the Times credit they left Norfolk solely on this story for so many years)
He is contemptuous of those coming late who are not really applying themselves to understanding the history here and instead merely want to weaponise the matter.
Could not agree more, the shameless opportunism on display in the last week or so has really been something to see.
Andrew Norfolk in an interview (Reality of Sexual Grooming Gangs in the UK (Interview with Andrew Norfolk by Sikh Awareness Society on YouTube) with the Sikh leader admits that he has noticed a pattern of abuse of young girls in the regional press but did not report on it as he did not want to help the far right (5:06min). As much as I am grateful for his reporting on the matter for the Times since 2011, this statement made my blood boil. If we got to the bottom of the problem years ago we could surely made a national awareness campaign, workshops at schools, internal training for social workers etc. Couldn’t we?
You seem to have your chronology wrong. Starmer became DPP in 2008 and didn’t change the guidelines for his prosecutors until 2012. In the meantime, on his watch, girls were abjectly failed. In the case of Amber, the recent Manchester inquiry found the CPS’s treatment of her (they prosecuted her as a co-defendant alongside the rapists) was itself abuse.
The initial Jay Report into Rochdale was a good job but her subsequent, ludicrously drawn out ICSA report didn’t address grooming gangs and her recommendations are only peripherally relevant to that problem.
Mr Furedi doesn’t explain how (the girls and young women of) Keighley were forgotten.
Instead, he repeats that they have been forgotten. He says very little in many words. Is the explanation a lack of moral courage? Is it due to an abrogation of professional duty by the ‘services’? Is it in part due to the no-show of feminists holding their customary vigils for women victims of male violence?
Woven into his narrative forgetting of the forgetting are the activities of the far-Right (how far are they and by what measure?). As if they were somehow adding to the abuse by their interest.
Mr Furedi has written a book about fear in the 21st century. However, the thrust of this article conveys paralysis or lack of compassion more as a cause of the forgetting. At a time when a courageous French woman is rightly lauded for helping to reveal the true nature of the midnight horror of mass rape there is no corresponding praise of the forgotten of Keighley and many other places that have become dark pits where certain women are sought out as if they were prey animals.
Is the forgetting due to diversity becoming the strength of the perpetrators?
And in one breath he says they were forgotten and in another he says if only nobody had brought it up again, a girl could have led a peaceful life. You can’t have it both ways. I don’t understand why, in context, anyone (victims too, who are now older) would want to forget what happened given the fact it’s happening again elsewhere. Were no lessons learned or procedures put into place that arrest the culprits without playing the cultural race card? How else do you protect girls now without using lessons of the past?
Difficult topics like this always generate a lot of froth on all sides. The really good news in all this is the way the “Overton Window” had moved so rapidly.
Jenrick with his alien cultures with medieval attitudes to women comment would have been unthinkable for an MP to express before Christmas. Whilst Jenrick is 100% correct, the comment only addresses 50% of this specific problem and none of the other similarly sourced problems (terrorism, antisemitism, homophobia etc).
The term Pakistani heritage obscures the truly awful truth that this in not just men recently arrived from the Pakistani tribal areas, but it also involves their offspring, who were born here. The problem is a cultural one (not an ethnic / racial one) it involves class as well as the teachings of Islam which play a huge part in that culture. It is that fact which is spreading the cancer of not just misogyny but the hatred of all non Muslims and Muslims not deemed Muslim enough down through the generations and to converts (the truth in the Southport cover up will be coming out soon).
The only answer is as Tommy Robinson said in his address to the Oxford Union nearly 10 years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YQ94jFg_4A (go to 1 hour 6 minutes in if you don’t want to listen to the whole thing) which is to link up with the moderate Muslims who are as horrified by the behaviour of these people and are equally threatened by them.
Whilst there is a risk that this greater freedom we suddenly have to talk about these issues could lead to violence, that risk is far less than the risk imposed by continuing to deny the ability to speak. Indeed if cool heads in both the Muslim and non Muslim communities prevail the dialogue could lead to to something genuinely constructive.
“… moderate Muslims who as as horrified by the behaviour of these people and are equally threatened by them.”
Where are the ‘moderate Muslims’ shouting their ‘horror’ from the roof tops and clamouring for justice and deportation against the perpetrators? So far I’ve heard a general deafening silence from this quarter.
Raja Miah, the person who with others including local Muslims, has fought for the last 6 years to force Oldham council to request the national inquiry which sparked this latest round is one of those moderate Muslims.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9IfPiH1eB4
Good to learn that there are moderate Muslims prepared to speak up. Would that more of them did so.
What about the Muslim Council of Great Britain? I haven’t seen any published material consistently citing their condemnation.
There’s nothing moderate about Quran. Even if there were any moderate Muslims, they would be a very small minority.
I’m afraid appealing to Mr Furedi’s commonsense is useless. This article shows it is absent and he is a captive of the thinking that allowed these atrocities in the first place. When I see his byline in the future I’ll pass on by.
thank you for expressing the truth of the matter so well
The race riots in Burnley, Oldham and Bradford in 2001 were not investigated by the media. Instead the BNP were blamed and no questions were asked as to whether there was an underlying cause. Was the rape of white girls by Muslims to blame? I don’t know. The first documentary that exposed the racial divide in some of the smaller northern towns was by Darcus Howe wandering around the country. He did so by accident and not by design. By talking to people and listening to their replies.
The Guardian newspaper takes great pains to conceal the identity of Pakistani rape gang members in a recent editorial.
This article claims that the Home Office report of 2020 stated that most members of child abuse gangs were white men. This is a very misleading statement. The report found that 30% of offenders were white, and 28% were Asian. Now, White men make up more than 30% of the population. Some of the white male offenders were white European immigrants. White British men were therefore significantly underrepresented in child sex abuse gangs.
Asians make up 8% of the population and therefore were significantly overrepresented in child sex abuse gangs. Evidence suggests that among Asians,Pakistani men were particularly prominent in Child abuse gangs. Sikhs take steps to combat Pakistani child abuse. There are no examples of Japanese, Vietnamese child sex abusers in Britain. Therefore ,Pakistani men, who make up less than 6% of the population are massively overrepresented in child sex abuse gangs.
Why has the Guardian decided to conceal the clear evidence of the identity of the perpetrators of these horrific abusers?
The majority of child sex abuse happens in families.
There are and have been many scandals involving Christian denominations and child abuse as I’m sure you know. The phrase White Christians of English or Irish heritage was never used in the description.
Many also choose not to mention the main Prosecutor who nailed many of the Gangs was of Pakistani, Muslim heritage. The impressive Hazir Azful who turned his rage about these hideous criminal abusers into effective action.
Nonetheless some communities do need to ask themselves some searching questions. But be cautious how quickly it turns into a racial hustle used to weaponise and be used against an entire community.
I’d be interested in your views on likes of Andrew Tate and his views on women. Does the Right display similar outrage? Or would he be a hero like Yaxley-Lennon?
Because there are no rape gangs in Hampstead, Richmond or Putney where Guardian readers live – and nothing will be done about any of these issues until there are.
It is interesting how you have pointed out Sikhs, Japanese, Vietnamese….
But avoided the most obvious comparison, Indian Hindus, who are the largest immigrant group after muslims, look the most similar to Pakistanis and are genetically similar, and yet have ZERO involvement in “grooming” gangs. It wasn’t intentional, I am sure, but it shows a subtle bias that exists in your mind, and the other side of the games played by the Guardian and co.
If you read the Guardian and BBC, you will little positive about India, but a series of sensationalist headlines about cases of “rape culture” in India – invariably , these stories were individual standalone incidents, which were quickly and harshly prosecuted, and led to massive public protests and backlash. Reporting which has led to entrenched racist attitudes against Indians, and was intended to, despite India having fewer incidents than UK or South Africa, and Indian immigrants having near zero incidents wherever they go to.
Meanwhile, the Guardian and BBC were busy concealing (or attacking whistleblowers ) massive, systematic, gang based cases dominated by one particular religion, which were not prosecuted, where there were no protests or outrage in the Pakistani community who knew exactly what was going on.
That’s not specific to Indians incidentally. These same people are also responsible, using similar tactics, dubious “data” and scaremongering “studies”, for propagating the “college rape culture ” myth, even though universities are the safest, and if anything highly misandrist places, and also drove changes in rules to protect “victims” that are horribly biased and prone to abuse against young boys, thanks to a guilty unless proved innocent premise.
The way Leftists/ feminists and the “love not hate” brigade, for all their crocodile tears about female victims (and only female victims, male issues are to be scoffed at, but that’s another story), protect actual large scale abusers or genuinely misogynistic cultures is one half of their hypocrisy.
The other, equally damaging part, is how they take the axe to cultures which are NOT as horrific and might even be weighted in favour of females – Western Europe/ US culture is the prime example, if anything laws and hiring practices are severely pro female and have been for decades, while simultaneously leftists do their best to slander the West and destroy it’s foundations.
Outstanding comment, sir. Every one of your words rings true.
Because they’re the Guardian of course.
Mass third world immigration from barbaric societies has destroyed large parts of urban England. Even Scotland has a grooming problem as the conviction yesterday in Glasgow clearly shows.
Not only the UK. 400 girls were sexually assaulted on NYE in Milan this year. Meloni is kicking them out already. The 5 dead and the hundreds injured in the NYE German firework violence? Same suspects again.
Time for mass remigration to their or their parents home countries through out Europe before we lose our great continent forever.
This needs to happen quickly.
Too late. They’ll outbreed you. Most European nations are lost within a decade. Sad.
It is too late.
As recently as 200 odd years back, Hindus and Sikhs were the majority in the Punjab.
About a hundred years back, Lahore and Karachi were at least half, if not more, Hindu / Sikhs / Christian.
Today, in what is now called Pakistan, barely a couple of million non muslims remain.
And every year, within even this small remaining community, 50-100 or more underage, even pre-teen Hindu girls are kidnapped and “convert” to islam.
Britain, and a lot of Western Europe, is cooked. It might take a few decades, maybe a century or two, but you will get there.
I agree with you, and I would like to see a *proper* inquiry with the findings acted upon.
But it won’t happen. Any inquiry would be a whitewash (apparently the last one focused on the Cotswolds rather than deprived post-industrial areas) and the establishment lacks the minerals to act on any sensible recommendations.
I’m 100% certain you have not read the Jay Report. You just lazy? or too worried it might not play quite so well to your preconceived views on the matter?
I suspect bit of both.
The Jay Report doesn’t even scratch the surface. You’ve lost this argument. There must be a proper public enquiry – not another bureaucratic whitewash.
In the latest sexual exploitation inquiry I went to complete a form that I had been sexually abused by a priest. The process was arduous to say the least and they rejected my narrative. So much for government inquiries – they’re not worth the name. And what will they achieve? Hillsborough achieved nothing – it was the fight of Phil Scraton and the second inquest that brought out the truth. The government doesn’t care.
Yes – ‘barbaric’ is a much better word than ‘Medieval’.
That simplistic solution starts with a huge presumption & for that reason it won’t work. It presumes all these offenders of Asian descent are immigrants. In fact many are 2nd generation meaning they were born & raised here. They are fully British citizens. How then can you round them up & deport them. The truth is you cannot, any more than you could deport a boy born to white English parents. The answers are more complex & troubling. There’s an honour culture in Muslim society that we westerners don’t really understand. That needs understood & tackled. Community leaders is those communities need to acknowledge this & deal with it. The police need belatedly to get some backbone. Finally, both police & social services need to see these young women for the traumatised kids they are, not just worthless pieces of white trash.
Those arrested in Rotherham should have been sent back to Pakistan, but they weren’t. They were allowed to revoke their Pakistani citizenship. They served no where near enough time in jail and are back on the streets. Thumbing their noses at their victims. People like Samantha Smith, who, a while ago, appeared on GB news to talk about her experiences. T
he next day, police are at her door to intimidate her.
This country needs an inquiry so desperately. One which has the powers to go anywhere and prosecute anyone. Also, to start the process of deporting all these “Asian” men back to Pakistan.
Ok. I agree. But what is to be done about these muslim boys? If its a cultural thing, but these men are brought up in Britain… surely this needs to be addressed.
2nd Generation does not mean they have grown up with British values and they should be deported to their parents’ or grandparent’s country of origin.
Many of these enclaves of Muslim communities reject British values unless it suits them; this is why we have many Pakistani’s, who are of the 2nd and 3rd Generation, who view Pakistan as “home”. This is why they have preyed on white girls because they have been taught, by their own culture and religion, that white girls are whores who are there to be used and abused because they are infidels. There is reason why many of these girls recount being called “white whores”, “white c*nts” and many other slurs starting with their race at the forefront. Any other group targetted with such slurs would be branded as racial hatred.
“the wild tweets of an American billionaire, the subject of grooming gangs has again been turned into a game of political football”
Finally addressing this officially tolerated horror would hardly quality as “political football.” And if it took “wild tweets of an American billionaire” to begin the process, so what?
Exactly. You don’t like Elon Musk or Robinson to pick up a story as horrific as this, then don’t try to cover it up yourself for two decades.
The media love to point out Musk’s wealth, as though that somehow invalidates his opinions.
The far left doctrine of unearned power.
35 likes suddenly turned into 8 as I watched. Moderators?
While Im glad that the conspiracy to keep the facts away from public view and the deeply shocking evidence of what young girls were abandoned to suffer has been smashed, I’m heartbroken by the appalling response from the government, the establishment and much of the media and their desire to frame this as some kind of far right agenda. Not so very long ago these northern towns were regarded as safe places to grow up in. The betrayal is staggering and those who seek to deny the truth beyond contempt. Everyone involved in the cover up should be named and held to account. If this issue gets suppressed once again without that happening how can people ever hope to regain trust in the establishment?
I can see I’m going go down the whole stream here and point out almost all comments from folks who’ve not bothered to read the Jay Report.
If you’ve time to read Unherd you’ve time to read the 7yr report into the Grooming Gangs scandal. It’s just whether one can be bothered.
the 7yr report into the Grooming Gangs scandal
What report would that be? It’s not the Jay Report, which barely covers the tip of the iceberg.
You keep citing the Jay Report as if it’s a matter of ‘problem solved’. The scandal here is that nothing has been done about ir, rendering the report itself useless except as lining for drawers and kitty bins.
I will agree with you that there does not seem to be any need for a new inquiry. What is needed now, and everybody is clamouring for, is action. And the longer 2TS keeps this situation bottled up the more likely it is that there will be a public explosion that commits injustice against good, honest well-assimilated immigrants.
The correct word below is “cowardly” and not “terrified”:
“Keighley remains a case study in exploitation — first by a terrified establishment”
I strongly disagree with the tone of this article in implying sympathy for those who failed in their duty.
The article suggest that all parties are equally at fault. This isn’t really correct, is it ? It’s the failure of the local authorities to act in the first place that’s the bigger crime than any political exploitation later by the right (which is merely a side effect of the initial failure), however unattractive that might be.
You think we’ve got problems with them now..hang on another 20/30 years when their numbers have more than trebled
As I have stated in a previous article, England is now a shithole country, no matter how pretty and quaint the villages look. If the citizens don’t demand immediate investigations by an independent source England will be on the shithole country list for a long, long time. This story is starting to have legs and the outrage from all over the world is on its way. Investigate, try, and prison the folks responsible, including politicians, bureaucrats, police, and any other slease bag that had anything to do with not stopping it.
Another clown who’s not read the Jay Report before pontificating.
The explosion of unthinking comment on social media certainly has it’s role in degrading the Nation.
Have you read the Jay Report? You’re making a lot of claims about it that don’t really stand up.
J Watson, you called me a clown. Disagreeing with me is fine but when you immediately descend into name-calling, you have identified yourself as emotional and unserious. What critical thinking and common sense person wouldn’t want an investigation and a full accounting? If you object to me calling England a shithole, say that, and give me reasons why it isn’t. That would be a good debate, mate. Rethink your comments and if you want to debate, please let me know. The Clown.
Watson is becoming increasingly unhinged.
Ban Islam deport imams and shutter every mosque or Islamic cultural center. That will be the only way to deny this scourge of life.
Could you perhaps highlight the fact that it is not Pakistanis, but Pakistani Muslims. I have not heard of any Pakistani Hindus or Christians being involved.
So the abuses in Protestant and Catholic seminaries and homes over many years are English Christians and should always have that moniker too? You happy with that and prepared to be consistent?
Was a Muslim man of Pakistani heritage who prosecuting and nailed many of the Gangs. Look it up and spend some time not taking all your news force fed by weaponisers for goodness sake.
The what-a-dope community is heard from. Thank you for your service, mate.
“the abuses in Protestant and Catholic seminaries and homes over many years are English Christians”,
Yes, and I never heard them being referred to as “European criminals “.
“Muslim man of Pakistani heritage who prosecuting”
Which doesn’t quite offset thousands of muslims involved in the gangs, and many others who knew but kept quiet of even supported their “brothers”.
Incidentally, that prosecutor is alive because he is here. The few sane muslims in Pakistan who tried to oppose blasphemy laws or forcible conversion of young Hindu girls, invariably met a sticky end.
Does it need saying? Really? Did you not hear about partition in 1948?
We haven’t forgotten, the government does not care and will sacrifice as many of us as need be for DEI, inclusion and multiculturalism as needed. All to follow the wef plan.
fI wonder why I continue to support UnHerd when I read this sort of biased, hateful and uninformed drivel.
As a Regional Organiser of the BNP I can assure Mr Furedi that we were all trying our very best to bring the Muslim rape gangs into the public domain. The same appalling and criminal behaviour was being enacted in Oxford, High Wycombe, Reading and other cities and towns in the South. Just as in the North the authorities were wilfully ignoring this shameful fact and we were thwarted at every turn. I can assure the biased writer of this article that we, the BNP, were not doing it for any reason whatsoever other than to protect the victims. There are many people in authority who deserve to be in prison for their wilful negligence starting with the then head of the CPS, Starmer, together with various Chief Constables and Councillors.
I’m 100% certain that nothing will happen as it will blow apart the nonsensical premise of multiculturalism which has been inflicted on this once homogeneous country.
I don’t think it has ever been homogeneous. But it used to be able to agree on the basics. And I think to a certain extent that is still true, despite blinkered ideologies blurring the lines for many people and a growing immigrant population that refuses to integrate, but seeks to exploit, using our own tolerance and generosity against us (just as China is exploiting the capitalist system).
Imagine if this horror for young girls had happened in the American South, in a place like Texas where law and order are taken seriously, and self-defense is part of the culture. State and local authorities, along with the police, would have likely acted decisively with arrests and prosecutions. If they failed, it’s likely the fathers of these girls would have taken matters into their own hands without hesitation, and some perpetrators would be dead. Contrast this with Britain today, where it seems the spirit of the WWII generation has been lost, and such threats are met with far less resolve.What happened to the men of Britain? Are you not men?
I do think that the UK needs to look at the attitude of Muslims in this country; a comment which most people will automatically deem Islamaphobic. But as a recent documentary on Radio 4 revealed on the meaning of ‘fatwa’ – when it came to Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, Iran wasn’t interested in passing a fatwa against Rushdie until two men from the British Muslim community went to Iran and demanded a fatwa against him. Similarly, though of course, men of all races abuse and rape children and women, these grooming gangs are from the Pakistani community – but has any muslim organisation spoken out against them? If not it would suggest that they believe these young girls were ‘asking for it’ after all – I’ve certainly met muslim women who hold that view! These are important issues that should not be whitewashed (excuse the pun) because it shows that muslim men need educating and that multiculturalism has failed.
A not-infrequent explanation I’ve heard over here (Japan) from some Muslim residents that I know, are that the British grooming gangs might well be mainly from the Pakistani immigrant community but they are not “real” Muslims because a “real” Muslim would never commit such acts. This is of course self-serving nonsense, merely to enable Muslim communities, everywhere, to remain silent.
Local councillors asking journalists not to write about things. What does that remind me of?
Anyone who knows anything about Keir Hardie must know how speechlessly horrified he would be by what has become of the party he founded.
“Wild tweets?” Musk focused the world’s attention on a sickness the locals couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything about for fear of being accused of racism. Britain, at least the decent people living there, are ashamed of the global censure raining down because Musk exposed the degredation of their spineless culture. The UK might not yet be a failed state but it certainly shows all the signs of a failing one.
The feeling you get is that there are places in Britain, and people in Britain, that it is now generally considered OK not to care about. Basically, just don’t go there, and forget about them. Two tier Britain – and this time it did t start with Kier.
Err yet another simpleton who seems to forget we’ve had the Tories/Right in power for 14 of the last 14.5yrs. Where you’ve been? In a coma?
The public impression is that nothing beyond Westminster interests the government nowadays, as their goals are not running the country for the citizens but for their own private interests. And the further from Westminster the stronger the feeling of abandon. This is fueling calls for the break up of the UK – the most self-destructive of the possible solutions available.
It’s heartbreaking. Almost nobody cares, unless there are headlines to make or votes to be garnered. Yet there’s no reason for the apathy. The people of Keighley have done nothing wrong, and putting things right would cost next to nothing. It’s just laziness.
Turnout in the 2019 general election was 72%,in 2024 it was 62%. Next time, it will be lower still. That’s what people do, when democracy doesn’t work for them. They stop voting.
No you didn’t care until now. And I bet you’ve not read the Jay Report so your ‘caring’ even now paper thin.
Having lived there. My female partner used to be worried walking alone, leery Pakistanis on street corners or outside barber shops, and occasionally she was followed by two or three men.
Opposite our house was a car wash that was a front for a coke dealer who tried to convince me that I should buy from him because it was “halal”.
There was an Italian pizza place run be a gregarious Keighley born and bred man who used to talk about how “Keighley has changed” and how it’s lost it it’s way. We jokingly called it the “racist Italian”.
EDL graffiti was visible in some locations, not really surprising given the justifiable resentment and the sentiment was not uncommon.
One day some youths were firing fireworks horizontally down my street. I called the police to report it and was visited by police who told me that I shouldn’t have called them as the Pakistanis doing it were “celebrating a wedding”. I don’t think white youths would have got away with the same behaviour.
Driving in the area is known by the locals to be dangerous. People warned me not to get out of the car if you crash, stay still and ring the police. I know people who crashed with Pakistanis and were surrounded by violent agitators called in by the driver of the other car.
Insurance fraud is the highest in the UK in the Bradford area and almost every Pakistani brags about the fact they actually drive their uncles car and their mum drives theirs. I had someone physically try to run me off the road, and I’ve seen the most dangerous driving. Again the law is not upheld because of cultural sensitivities and it adds about £1700 to your insurance costs in those postcodes, regardless of your experience.
As someone who has travelled Pakistan I can safely say that some of the worst aspects of the culture had been imported. Misogyny and religious superiority, treating the laws and customs of the kafir as optional.
We left because Keighley was the worst place we’d lived and I no longer have any illusion that multiculturalism works. I enjoyed my trip to Pakistan very much, and applied the “when in Rome” approach, it would be far better if those we imported had done the same…
One thing I think we would all like to know, preferably from someone working n the front line, is that procedures for reporting and dealing with this are now absolutely clear, and that a culture of political correctness no longer gets in the way of clear and open communication.
It’s considerably changed esp how young girls and women are treated in Court, but even now we have not implemented all the 20 recommendations of the Jay Report. Read them. Some are now in legislation going through Parliament.
It’s not just Keighley where they are forgotten.
Eg.The dreaming spires of Oxford.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2050kkpzypo
The parts of Oxford in question are a long way from any spires.
Too true. That district of Oxford is dominated by a minaret.
Politicians job is to represent the people. If they are not represented by the main parties then they will look elsewhere,hence the BNP vote.
Victims say they did nothing concrete. That may be true,or maybe they were blocked.
It is dangerous to suppress what the people say they want.
The lack of action, by a political class the majority of which is pro-multiculturalism, will not change. Direct action by parents, neighbours and friends against these despicable men and their protectors would seem to be the only viable action. The British stood alone against a much stronger Germany in 1939, even though there was significant political pressure then not to so do; surely there remains some of such spirit in Britain to just attack this current appalling situation head on.
It’s unfortunate that most Brits have have been infected by the parasitic mind virus. Britain will have an economy and safety on par with South Africa in a few decades.
That’s what worries Elon Musk!
This reads like a lot of enabling is going on, with knee jerk blaming of outside parties who seem more upset than the locals.
It may well be that in overall UK sexual abuse stats, Muslims are not over represented. (https://www.noahsnewsletter.com/p/the-demographics-of-grooming-gangs).
But the culture worldwide still imposes shocking abuse on its own women in a myriad of forms, many of them hidden by marriage. See eg ‘Headscarves and Hymens’, by Mona Eltahawy.
And how can we be surprised, when the whole religion and holy book is based on the ramblings of its highly oversexed prophet: https://www.answering-islam.org/Silas/mo_sex.htm
Valuable input, irrefutable. Instructive to recall that copies of the Holy Koran are given away free, in the heart of London!
I can’t shake the thought that diversity is not our strength.
One just has to read the Quran and the Hadiths to se how badly taken in our establishment figures have been.
Interesting article on Ann Cryer and her calling out of the grooming gangs at link –
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/30/rotherham-girls-could-have-been-spared-ann-cryer
Yep she wasn’t listened to. See Andrew Norfolk recent interviews too
There was one on YouTube recently where Norfolk was allowed to tell his story and give his opinions and then at the end the presenters twisted the whole thing to support the 2TS narrative about a ‘far right’ conspiracy. That’s how the MSM operate nowadays.
Sorry posted twice
Deleted for reasons of restricted free speech.
What about the freedom of spech?
There seem to be alot of Journalists, News Editors and of course politicians and Tech Bros coming to this story v late. The Times journalist, Andrew Norfolk, who first investigated over a number of years and broke the story of Grooming Gangs c15 years ago is worth listening to, esp what he says about late Bandwagon jumpers. You can see why some in a town like this would be cynical about some of the interest now.
Yes, and your own rag, the Guardian, is the worst offender of all in this respect.
There was also a prime-time BBC documentary about it in 2020, so where was the outrage then? Where was it mentioned in the any of the party’s manifestos? Wanting an enquiry now is blatant political opportunism. What is needed now is more action – prosecutions – internal police investigations etc.
Fat chance of any of that without a rigorous public enquiry chaired by someone who is not a Labour hack.
Sounds like the far right might be the real problem
S/
Irony?
Who is a grooming gang, and who is not? Underage groupies have always been integral to rock ‘n’ roll. We all know what at least used to be endemic at public schools. Popular entertainers were known to sleep with underage girls at the youth conferences of the political parties back in the day. And so on. Reading about the role in grooming gangs of fast food outlets, minicab offices, and other such establishments, I am not alone in asking to be told something that I did not already know from towns and villages that were still overwhelmingly white, and which were literally or practically 100 per cent so in the 1990s, when it was effectively less illegal than underage drinking for men in their twenties, or even older, to have sex with girls of 15, 14, or even younger.
I don’t think you understand what a so-called grooming gang is. You clearly don’t appreciate the difference between girls and young women who hang around concert halls and hotels in the hope of meeting their idol, and the constant and insidious plying of alcohol, cigarettes and drugs on young vulnerable girls – a lot of them pretty neglected, ‘in care’ and starved of affection – by men in their local communities who are running the local kebab takeway or driving a taxi constantly around the local streets. These poor girls were preyed upon and passed around to be abused like a piece of meat. THAT is who a grooming gang is, to answer your question.
Yes, this is clearly very different to the paedophilia, groupies and scoring culture that have been around for decades. Apparently it is rooted in the Muslim religion and its call for Jihad – whose call to convert or destroy all unbelievers specifically includes the raping and murder of women.
It is for this reason that I see unreformed Islam as incompatible with western values. However, the Christian Church also went through its barbaric phases (crusades, Inquisition, witch hunting and inter-sectarian wars), before evolving into a more spiritually guided religion. The advantage was being based on Christ, who preached LOVE. I’m not sure that a religion based on a warrior leader has the tools to handle such a transition. But in the end it comes down to the adherents and their spiritual – not mundane – values.
People having casual sex is not the same as young girls being raped with bottles and having petrol poured over them.